Life Design Thinking is a way to apply the methodology of Human Centred Design to your own challenges, in order to come up with solutions and desirable outcomes to create your KICK-ASS life.

Yes, that is MY definition of Life Design Thinking, but I think it is a damn good one (even if I do say so myself).

But, before we dive deeper into the topic of Life Design and Life Design Thinking let’s start with the basics.

WHAT IS DESIGN THINKING?

Design Thinking (or Human Centered Design) is a creative problem finding/solving framework used by “designers” to find and create desirable outcomes and solutions for their end users.

Design Thinking is used by all kinds of companies and organizations to create innovative products and services that are based on the actual (not implied) needs of their user/customer. Oftentimes this methodology is used to sort out Wicked Problems. (A wicked problem is a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, ambiguous and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize.)

These are the 5 stages of the Design Thinking process:

1. Empathize – the first stage of Design Thinking is to gain an empathic understanding of the person (user/customer/client) and their needs. At this stage, the “designer” attempts to remove all assumptions and instead uses empathy to gain insights into the person and the needs they are designing for.
2. Define – in this stage, you gather all the insights from Stage 1 and synthesize that information into a specifically defined problem that you are trying to solve. This is often done by creating a problem statement that the designers will work from.
3. Ideate – in the ideation stage, the designers are ready to start generating ideas for how the problem (defined in Stage 2) might be solved. The goal here is to use different ideation techniques to come up with lots and lots of ideas that may be possible solutions to the problem your user/customer is having. (I have underlined the words might and may above because even your best ideas are still just hypotheses at this point and need validation).
4. Prototype – This is an experimental phase of the process where it’s time to build low-cost, scaled down versions of your best ideas/solutions. These low-fidelity versions of your solutions are called “prototypes” and are designed to put in front of actual users/clients in order to get feedback. These prototypes can take many different forms (depending on whether you are designing a product or service) and are only a representation of what a fully built out solution may look like.
5. Test – the final Stage of the process is to test your prototypes (ideas/solutions) with your actual users/customers. The testing stage is used to gather feedback to see if your idea/solution is on the right track and if so, what changes need to be made to the prototype. This is an iterative process but the goal here is to validate the solution by gathering information from real users/customers to make sure the idea is the best solution you can make.

Now I have been a practitioner of Design Thinking and Human Centered Design for a long time.

I added it to my role as a Consultant and was so impressed by the results that I started a small strategic design studio based on these principals.

We begin to teach workshops on Design Thinking/Service Design and helped several companies and brands implement this methodology into their organizations.

But when I was teaching these companies about Design Thinking I kept thinking about how it would be a perfect fit for something much more impactful…helping people figure out how to design better lives.

So how do you apply the same methodology that big companies use to design better products and services to “life”? (and why should you care?)

Well, I am so glad you asked.

LIFE DESIGN THINKING

“Life” Design Thinking is taking that same framework (with these mindsets) and applying it to THE most important thing you can design…YOUR LIFE!

Think about it for a second.

Can you think of a bigger or more important “wicked problem” to work on than your life?

Talk about ambiguous!

So let’s take a look at the 5 Stages of Design Thinking again but now let’s put them into the context of designing your life.

1. Empathize – Traditionally this means to empathize with the user of products or customers of a service. But in the case of Life Design, you get to empathize with someone way cooler than that….YOU! Self-empathy can be tough, and the goal here is to really understand yourself enough and get an idea of the needs, obstacles, and challenges you are having.
2. Define – Here we are trying to clearly define the problem that your user/customer is dealing with. In Life Design we do the same thing. Remember- You are the end user! So which specific problems or obstacles are you facing that are preventing you from getting to where you want to be? We turn the answer into a problem statement that we can work from.
3. Ideate – Now this is where the real fun begins! Coming up with ideas (and lots of them) and possible solutions that would get you on the track to the KICK-ASS life that you are after.
4. Prototype – In Life Design we want to make small experiments and put them out in the world to see if we are on the right track.  The prototypes that we create are experimental but also experiential. We want to try things and experience them to see how the feel. The best way to learn is by DOING (instead of just thinking and analyzing) so our Life Design prototypes get you out in the world to do just that.
5. Test – This is where we put our prototypes to the test. Once we decide on what an actual solution might look like we actually get out there in the real world to get some feedback. We want to thoroughly test out these ideas, learn all we can and “course correct” if need be. Testing small (before we make any big life decisions) is our way to validate (or not) that we are on the right track. If what we thought we wanted proves to be right at this point we continue. If not we iterate or, if need be, go back to drawing board.

Using the Life Design Thinking framework can be a very powerful, creative and fun way for you to gain new insights and come up with some exciting solutions to the very challenging problem we all face….creating the AWESOME, KICKASS LIFE that we know we want and deserve.